Algae for Energy

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Algae for Energy

Chris Horner, senior fellow for the Competitive Enterprise Institute's (CEI) Center for Energy and Environment, doubts it would work.

"It's been among this suite of pie-in-the-sky ideas that have numerous hurdles, not least of which is volume," he explains. "There are always ideas to get funding from the taxpayer to pursue research projects, and this has been among them for years, and it's not here."

But Horner points out that that is not the biggest hurdle the president has to overcome.

"The biggest hurdle, however, to the president raising this is the argument for talking about algae so we can pull up to the gas tank and say fill 'er up with algae or put some algae in your tank is that, well -- oil wouldn't be here tomorrow, so let's not drill anymore. Well, algae is not likely to be here for decades -- even if it's real and you get over the volume at the scale problem," the expert explains. So how much is algae fuel going for at the moment? In a blog post for CEI, Horner puts it at $425 a gallon, which is well above regular gasoline's near $4 average.